Insights are given and predictions are made for this year's graphics processor market.
www.electronicdesign.com, Jan. 05, 2021 –
Before the early 1980s, graphics controllers were made with dozens of discrete logic chips. NEC revolutionized the graphics market with the first VLSI graphics controller chip. Moore's Law took over and improved graphics controllers, which were renamed GUI accelerators in the 1990s when Windows became bitmapped. Matrix math and transformations were moved from the CPU to a new class of programmable devices known as the GPU in 1999. However, the first programmable graphics processor was built in 1986 by Texas Instruments.
In the early 1990s, over 70 companies were making, designing, or promising a 3D controller. Many of them contributed to the advancement of the industry; almost all of them vanished. In particular, Intel has tried five times to launch a standalone graphics processor and is now reentering the market once again. GPUs moved into smartphones in 2006 and revolutionized mobile devices. Game consoles used early GPUs back in 1996, and CPUs got GPUs embedded in them in 1991.